20251223 Tuesday, December 23, 2025. Grand Cayman Island
The ship arrived off Georgetown, Grand Cayman, during the early morning hours. There was no noise associated with anchoring or launching the tenders because shore based passenger ferries were used to carry us to shore, and the ship appears to be virtually anchoring- maintaining its position with thrusters and propulsion systems instead of a physical anchor and chain. This may be less damaging to the environment. Where the ship was “moored” it was over 330’ deep. There was a second cruise ship doing the same thing nearby. It is apparently a German cruise line with “Mein Schiff” painted on its side in huge cursive lettering. The Mein Schiff 1 can carry 2800 passengers, so it is significantly smaller than the Sun Princess.
The temperature was about 80˚F with moderate winds and humidity, but the ship is anchored on the lee side of the island, so the water was pretty flat between the ship and the Georgetown Royal Watler cruise ship terminal.
Ben, Janet, Price, John and Iram met for breakfast at the Soleil dining room for a sit down breakfast. Unfortunately, service was quite slow, so it took more than an hour to get through breakfast. Ciara and Tom had breakfast in the buffet with Tom’s family, so they were ready to head off the ship much earlier. By the time we headed to the gangway, it was after 11am, so no tender tickets were required, and there was no advantage to having Elite status.
The overhead announcements and handouts said to expect a half hour ride to get between the ship and shore, but in actuality, once the ferry pushed off from the ship’s side, it took less than 10 minutes to tie up ashore and begin unloading. But if you include the total time it takes for each ferry to load and unload, it probably is a 30 minutes turn around time for each ferry.
There are a lot of shops, bars, and restaurants all along the waterfront, with municipal buildings and Hero’s Square about a block or two inland from the waterfront. There's also a historic church and small historical museum on the waterfront. The loop walk was just a little over a mile.
There were two further points of interest about 1.5 miles further away that Janet didn’t have any interest in seeing so she headed back to the ship early to look into future cruises and other things. John, Iram, Price and Ben headed off to 7 mile beach, which starts 1.5 miles from the cruise ship terminal.
Most of the streets of Georgetown are narrow 2 lane roads and they do drive on the left side of the road, like any proper British colonist would have it. There were some stretches with decent side walks, and others that were distinctly more 3rd worldly. There was a continuous stream of cruise ship tourists. It was easy to spot the Germans, who were a much more homogenous group than passengers coming off our ship.
The public access to the Seven Mile Beach were pretty shabby. One took us through the parking lot of a condominium complex with signs all over the place saying PRIVATE PROPERTY, FOR USE BY OWNERS ONLY, despite an obvious municipal PUBLIC BEACH ACCESS sign with arrows clearly pointing down that parking lot. It has us wondering if we were doing something illegal by following the signs but we followed a group of Germans who opened a gate that lead out onto the beach from the parking lot despite a sign nearby stating THESE FACILITIES ARE PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Once we got onto the beach, it was quite a disappointment. There was really not much of a beach at all. There was coral making up most of the beach with some sand interspersed, but in no place did the sand extend very far from the water to the top of the bank (no more than 20-30’ at the most). To swim, you had to walk out onto the coral along what looked like concrete walkways to ladders that dropped off the edge of the coral.
We could see much further down the beach, perhaps several miles away, more real sandy beaches, but we didn’t think it would be worth it to either continue to scramble down the very narrow and difficult to walk on parts of the beach that stood between where we stood and what looked like a Caribbean paradise. It gave us a better appreciation for Princess Cay, and other private beaches specifically built for cruise lines to visit. We later found out from Ciara that we should have walked down the street another 2 miles to get to the really nice beach.
It was a real disappointment that weather had canceled the sting ray swim because the town of Georgetown doesn’t have that much to offer in the way of unique or memorable experiences, but those that did walk the extra 2 miles (Tom's family) did later report that was one of the highlights of their trip
Ben and Price headed back to the ship from 7 mile beach, while John and Iram returned to the local craft market and downtown historical museum to support the local economy and become experts in Cayman Island culture and history. John and Iram later reported the cute little museum as one of their highlights of the trip.
Ben, Janet and Price had lunch poolside. Then Ben and Price relaxed a bit on the nice loungers in the Dome for a while as Janet had a nap in the room. Price then hit the spa.
Ciara and Tom’s family spent several hours ashore. They walked to 7 mile beach too, but got discouraged by the public beach access that did everything it could to discourage public access, so they went even further up the beach, but were rewarded with a much more beach-like sandy stretch of beach where they could actually swim.
They had walked 2 miles past where Ben, Price, John and Iram had gone to the beach access in front of the Ritz Carlton. After swimming and sunning, they took a cab to visit Hell, which is a small geological formation of jagged 10 million year old black limestone 11km from the cruise ship terminal, at the northern tip of the island near the end of 7 mile beach. Now they can truly say they’ve been to Hell and back. Then took a public bus back to the cruise terminal which got them onto the second to last water shuttle back to the ship.
We nearly missed our dinner seating. They release reservations after 10 minutes, and we headed down there with 5 of the 10. By the time we got there, the table we had sat at yesterday was already broken up and had 2 couples sitting there, but there was another 10 top in an adjacent room with the same waiters. Eventually, everyone arrived by the time the waiters were starting to take our dinner orders.
The dining service still takes too long. We were unable to attend any 7pm events because we hadn’t finished until nearly 7:30pm.
Ben, Janet and Ciara did attend an 80’s music trivia, but there were lots of ‘80’s savants there with at least 2 or 3 teams scoring perfect scores with artist and titles.
We did not stick around to see how that was resolved because we had to rush to the Princess Arena to get seats for the Showtime presentation, which was a Tribute to Princess by Kwame Michael. Although none of us were really fans of Prince, Kwame put on a very high energy and entertaining performance backed by the Sun Princess orchestra.
The show nearly ended with an accident because as the lights dimmed at the end of his second to last number, the center stage descended as he walked back towards the band on the back of the stage. He then came out for his last number but stepped right into the center stage as the floor was descending. It fortunately stopped about 3’ down, instead of 18’, so he sort of hopped/skidded down into the sunken pit and was able to finish his number without a hitch. He did have to get a stage hand to give him a hand climbing out though.
We did run into Price, Ciara, Sam, and Tom in the Eatery for late night snacks just before all that shut down, and we picked up some cookies at the International Cafe to make sure we didn’t die of famine during the night.
Tomorrow is a second day at sea as the ship heads to Roatan, Honduras.
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